


This Is Why We Fight

by dfotw



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Fanart, Ficlet, M/M, Photoshop, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dfotw/pseuds/dfotw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Smile!” says Moneypenny.</em>
  <br/><em>“Just take the bloody shot,” sighs M, “and get them out of my sight.”</em>
  <br/><em>“Eve, you do know I designed that camera to shoot actual bullets as well as high-resolution photographs, don’t you?”</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Why We Fight

**Author's Note:**

> It started with me seeing a picture of Daniel Craig and thinking, "this would look perfect by the side of the 'official' picture of Q!". Then I made a manip. Then I wrote a caption to post said manip on Tumblr. Then I decided to expand said caption into a drabble. Then I had 2,000 words of nothing much at all, so I decided to post them here.
> 
> Here are the manips that 'inspired' this ficlet: [00Q with a white background](http://dfotw.tumblr.com/post/39519945497/smile-said-moneypenny-just-take-the-bloody), [00Q with a MI6 background](http://dfotw.tumblr.com/post/39564111794/smile-said-moneypenny-just-take-the-bloody) (as seen below), [00Q black&white banner](http://dfotw.tumblr.com/post/39524097005/have-a-bloody-big-00q-banner) and [00Q movie-poster style](http://dfotw.tumblr.com/post/39596687754/last-iteration-of-this-manip-i-promise-click). Take them, use them as wallpaper, enjoy them!
> 
> Title from the The Decemberists' song of the same name.

“Smile!” says Moneypenny.

“Just take the bloody shot,” sighs M, “and get them out of my sight.”

“Eve, you do know I designed that camera to shoot actual bullets as well as high-resolution photographs, don’t you?”

Bond twitches by Q's side; he had been taking a nap on a sofa in Accounting when he'd got Moneypenny's message summoning him to the International Control Center (also known as 'the unfortunate souls who have to work directly under M's window'), and he's still a little high-strung and not a little disconcerted.

“Should we duck?” he asks Q.

“Honestly, 007,” drawls Q, “when it comes to handling modern technology, I trust Moneypenny more than you.”

“And that's why you're my favourite!” she replies brightly, without looking up from the camera.

“And because I weaponised your shoes. Not that they needed it,” Q adds under his breath, for Bond's benefit.

“Is that what you meant by improving the security of the reception areas for the safety of the head of the service?” asks M, who should not be allowed to read -let alone memorise- budget reports.

“Miss Moneypenny, will you shoot me already?” Bond steps in, heroically saving Q from having to give what sounds like an uncomfortable explanation; the quartermaster doesn't look even remotely thankful. “I'll even stand still this time.”

“You wish I would shoot you again... Q, what does the star button do?”

“Unless you wish for the hard drive in every computer in a 20 yard radius to be wiped clean, don't push it,” answers Q at once, and a chorus of whimpers rises from the desk agents behind them.

“Misuse of government equipment, standing in the way, and now terrifying the morning shift,” muses M. “Is there nothing else you want to do today, Bond?”

“Me? I'm waiting on my next assignment, sir. Actually, I was on my way to ask you about it...”

“For the seventeenth time this morning,” adds Moneypenny.

“The picture, Eve,” intervenes Q, and Bond doesn't usually like to be rescued, but he'll take it this time. “And then I'll need you to return the camera to me, I need to get it ready for 007 inevitably destroying it.”

“Maybe I'll bring it back this time.”

Q shoots him a condescending look, which normally would make Bond vow to throw the camera into the filthiest sewer he finds, but now he wants to prove him wrong instead, and if there is a driving impulse that can get James Bond to do something, it's the desire to prove people wrong: his whole career is testament to this.

“Yes,” the quartermaster says, his smile icy. “Maybe you will bring it back, in several pieces, for me to puzzle together in my copious spare time.”

“Surely the safety of the agent comes before the safety of the equipment?” The question is directed to M, but the man just gives Bond a deeply unimpressed look and turns to take a file from Tanner.

“Depends on the agent, 007,” says Q. “Eve, don't try to use the zoom function, none of us has earplugs.”

“And you are going to give this to Bond? You do know he's more likely to throw it at his target than he is to learn how to use any of these functions, don't you?”

Moneypenny knows how to hit where it hurts, and her smile says that she knows it.

“As long as it gets the job done.” Q gives a resigned shrug. “Surely even 007 can point and shoot... like you're about to demonstrate, Eve, I hope, because I could be doing useful things instead of standing around.”

“Yes, yes, don't get your knickers in a twist... stand together and smile, will you?”

Q sighs as if standing next to James Bond is the most vexing thing he's been asked to do after outfitting the man with the proper equipment, but he does give half a step to his left and puts his hands in his pockets, looking to all purposes as if he's about to be executed. Bond smirks and sidles closer, trying to appear relaxed but ready to push Q under the nearest table if Moneypenny presses the wrong button.

“You will give me a copy of this, right?” asks Moneypenny from behind the camera.

“You're pointing a gun at me, do you think I'll tell you I won't?”

“You better, or I will find you and I will shoot you. You and Bond can have matching scars.”

“Enough threatening for now, Miss Moneypenny.” Finally M has deemed it fit to intervene. “Take the bloody shot.”

Moneypenny smiles like a sphinx, but she finally presses the (right) button, and there's a flash and nothing explodes. The room behind them heaves a collective sigh of relief.

“Remember, a copy. Or I will kidnap your Scrabble mug.”

“Yes, yes.” Q takes the camera from her and makes a face at what he sees on the screen. “007, with me, let's see if you can surpass Moneypenny's expectations.”

“Oh, I can...” starts Bond, before Moneypenny slaps a warning hand over his mouth.

“Do try not to set up Bond with lines like that,” requests M with a pained face, giving Q the file he was looking at.

“My apologies, sir. I'll have this back to you before this evening.”

***

Bond does end up throwing the camera at the target, but in his defence that provides the crucial second of distraction he needs, *and* he manages pick up the camera before he has to vacate the scene on a liberated scooter.

“Well.” It seems that Q is physically incapable of sounding impressed. “Apart from the blood and hair on the casing, it's intact. Did you even attempt to use it as something other than a state-of-the-art rock?”

“Nothing interesting there to take pictures of.”

Q looks up from his examination of the camera.

“You were in Dubai, 007,” he says, as if he thinks Bond could have missed it.

“Precisely.”

Q lets a little huff of indignation and is about to saying something else when Bond interrupts him.

“Is that...?”

“Is that what?” He turns to look at what Bond is pointing at behind him. “Oh. That. Yes. Moneypenny, you know.”

And there it is, in the way his shoulders hunch just a little bit under the hideous designer cardigan he's wearing this day, in the way he turns his head a little too much to stare at a screen that doesn't look as if it needs staring. Bond wonders if he can get a charitable tax deduction for his silence as he leans across Q's desk to grab the picture frame.

“I'd tell you you could take it, but I know Eve has one for you as well. Do try to look surprised when she gives it to you.”

“Did she try to give one to Mallory too?”

“Actually, she gave M a picture of his late wife.” Q looks pensive. “I know because she asked me to bug the picture frame to notify her when he's been holding it in his hands too long so she can get him a cup of tea. Or a scotch, depending on his blood pressure.”

“You need to stop indulging her,” Bond tells him, even though he's impressed with Moneypenny's resourcefulness. “There's no reason why she gets weaponised high heels and bugs into M's office, and I can't even get an exploding pen.”

“You wreck enough havoc with what I give you. And if you can't even properly appreciate a camera that shoots bullets as well as photographs, why should I give you an exploding pen?”

“That I want one should be reason enough.” With a twitch of his nose, Q expresses clearly that it isn't; Bond deciders to try bribing. “You could be my favourite as well as Moneypenny's.”

“That's a dubious honour.”

“You could replace Moneypenny as my favourite.” Where bribery fails, the sense of competition that MI6 encourages amongst its employees might succeed.

“Slightly more tempting, but unless I get to shoot you as well, not worth the hassle. May I have that back?”

Bond looks down at the picture he's holding. Even in his shirtsleeves, he looks suave, smirking at Moneypenny as if daring her to shoot him, ready to step out of frame and do what needs to be done; Q stands with a different sort of confidence, and someone who doesn't know him would think he didn't want to stand there at all.

“Look at you, you look as if you were about to be shot.”

“With Moneypenny, it's always a possibility,” Q answers, but he comes closer to look at the picture Bond is holding. “Mmmm, yes, rather a modern interpretation of the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.”

“At least Mantegna's model wasn't wearing a hideous designer cardigan.” Bond absolutely doesn't preen when Q gives him a considering look; just because he can work a gun doesn't mean he can't also know about art and be considerably less pretentious about it than certain quartermasters.

“That makes you what, a half-demolished column? Fitting, really.”

“Not what they usually say when they talk about me being made of marble.”

Q gives a little snort of amusement, but his face says that comparing Bond to a Greek statue is not on his schedule for today.

“Give me that,” he says. “You can go flirt with Eve now and she'll give you your own copy, even if you don't want it.”

“I want it,” Bond says, relinquishing the picture frame, and he does. He wants to put it behind a hideous porcelain dog on the mantelpiece of his otherwise impersonal living room and think about it when he's thousands of miles away.

“Run out of practice targets, have you?” Q turns and puts the picture frame where it had been, nestled carefully between several monitors, out of the way but not out of sight.

There probably isn't a threat dire enough that Moneypenny would be willing to implement that would make Q keep that picture on his desk if he didn't want to.

“Just like you seem to have run out of paperweights,” says Bond, nodding to the picture frame.

Q gives him a startled glance, looks away, then looks back when Bond doesn't say anything else, just stands by his statement and waits. The quartermaster's gaze turns hesitant, then intrigued, then finally considering, which yes, is an improvement on his usual condescension, but James Bond is not used to being considered. Not for long, at least.

His patience is exhausted after thirty seconds, and he raises an eyebrow. Q smiles then, small and sly. 

“Go,” he says, turning back to his work, “and talk to Moneypenny. And then come back, there's a prototype I want you to test.”

There are schematics on the big monitor in front of them. Bond stops to examine them, and if he stands too close to Q, well, the view is better from there.

“An exploding pen,” he says, and he feels the corner of his mouth twitch in a smile.

“It's not an exploding pen, for goodness' sake,” says Q, but his impatience is feigned and he is trying not to smile. “It's a fountain pen. And it doesn't exactly explode, although you will want to be careful about the shrapnel.”

Other people get chocolates, or scotch. James Bond gets fountain pens that double as miniaturised rocket launchers. 

“I'll go talk to Miss Moneypenny, then, since I understand there's something in it for me.”

Q gives him a sly look out of the corner of his eye.

“You do that, and make sure to tell her that's the reason why you're there, and not to see her. I might be able to keep the department's budget from giving M a coronary if she kills you.”

“She won't kill me,” Bond says, already walking away.

“I'm her favourite,” Q reminds him.

“And that's why.”

With the satisfaction of having the last word, Bond walks out of Q branch, warm with the knowledge that the exploding pen schematics have been titled 'Project Temeraire'.

**Author's Note:**

> Pretentious art notes (inspired by Q):
> 
> -Andrea Mantegna's [St Sebastian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Sebastian_%28Mantegna%29).  
> -"Rather [a modern interpretation](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mb0pxrP4pI1rq1bg3o1_500.jpg) of the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian." (The Hollow Crown - Richard II)  
> -The inevitability of time, aka, a bloody big ship, aka, [The Fighting **Temeraire** tugged to her last berth to be broken up](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fighting_Temeraire).
> 
> I wish my first contribution to this fandom hadn't been quite so... wobbly.
> 
> Thanks for reading, feedback is appreciated!


End file.
